Re: Re: Modifying the environment

Circa 2005-06-15 dixit Glenn Morris:

: Vigil wrote:
: 
: > Not without restarting X.
: 
: Blast.
: 
: > You can of course modify a shell's environment and start any X
: > programs from that.
: 
: Sure. What tends to happen is, I modify the environment of my existing
: xterms, then some time later open a new one from the WM menu. The new
: one gets the old environment, leading to much fun and excitement when
: I forget I wanted to change the environment.

Several options:

    (a) If you're using a genuine xterm, you can start them with the
        '-ls' option, which causes the shell they start to be a "login"
        shell.  "Login" shells by definition read your ~/.profile (for
        Bourne/Korn shells), ~/.login (for C shells), or ~/.bash_profile
        or ~/.bash_login (for GNU Bash shells).  Put the environment
        settings in the appropriate file, or in a file "sourced"
        (included using the '.' or 'source' command) by the appropriate
        file.

    (b) Some shells (notably bash, csh, tcsh, sometimes pdksh, maybe
        zsh) read an "interactive" startup file as well, in which case
        you may not have to change how you start your xterm or other
        terminal window.  Bash usually reads ~/.bashrc, csh and tcsh
        read ~/.cshrc, and pdksh sometimes reads ~/.shrc or ~/.kshrc,
        depending on how it was built and whether the ENV environment
        variable is set (check the pdksh man page and search for "ENV"
        for more info).

    (c) Don't use applications directly.  Write "wrapper" scripts which
        set environment variables from a file (or directory) in your
        home directory.  For example, you could put your environment
        settings in a file called ~/.environment.sh:

            EDITOR=gvim
            VISUAL="${EDITOR}"
            
        Then, instead of calling gvim directly, you could write a
        wrapper script called, say, 'Editor':

            #!/bin/sh
            . "${HOME}/.environment.sh"
            ${EDITOR} "$@"

        Put this script somewhere on your path and make it executable.
        Then use it whenever you need an editor.  If you change your
        ~/.environment.sh file:

            EDITOR=xemacs
            VISUAL="${EDITOR}"

        then the 'Editor' script will see the change the next time it's
        run.

Good luck.

-- 
jim knoble  |  [email protected]  |  http://www.pobox.com/~jmknoble/
(GnuPG fingerprint: 809F:09B9:9686:D035:4AB0::9455:124B:0A62:DD6A:76D6)
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